History of the United States Republican Party in the context of "New Deal coalition"

The Third Party System was a period in the history of political parties in the United States from the 1850s until the 1890s, which featured profound developments in issues of American nationalism, modernization, and race. This period was marked by the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in the United States, followed by the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age.

It was dominated by the new Republican Party, which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising the freedmen, while adopting many Whig-style modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, social spending (such as on greater Civil War veteran pension funding), and aid to land grant colleges. While most elections from 1876 through 1892 were extremely close, the opposition Democrats won only the 1884 and 1892 presidential elections (the Democrats also won the popular vote in the 1876 and 1888 presidential elections, but lost the electoral college vote), though from 1875 to 1895 the party usually controlled the United States House of Representatives and controlled the United States Senate from 1879 to 1881 and 1893 to 1895. Indeed, scholarly work and electoral evidence emphasizes that after the 1876 election the South's former slave centers, which before the emancipation of Republican-voting African Americans was electorally dominated by wealthy slave owners who made up the southern base of Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists, began realigning into the Democratic Party due to the end of the now unpopular Reconstruction efforts; this new electoral base for the Democrats would finish realigning around 1904.

The Fourth Party System was the political party system in the United States from about 1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican Party, except the 1912 split in which Democrats captured the White House and held it for eight years.

American history texts usually call the period the Progressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name "System of 1896" by E. E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid-1960s.

In the 1860s, the Copperheads, also known as Peace Democrats, were a faction of the Democratic Party in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.

Republicans started labeling anti-war Democrats "Copperheads" after the eastern copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), a species of venomous snake. Those Democrats embraced the moniker, reinterpreting the copper "head" as the likeness of Liberty, which they cut from Liberty Head large cent coins and proudly wore as badges. By contrast, Democratic supporters of the war were called War Democrats. Notable Copperheads included two Democratic Congressmen from Ohio: Reps. Clement L. Vallandigham and Alexander Long. Republican prosecutors accused some prominent Copperheads of treason in a series of trials in 1864.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 1912. The Democratic ticket of governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey and governor Thomas Marshall of Indiana defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent President William Howard Taft and university president Nicholas Butler while also defeating the Progressive/"Bull Moose" ticket of former president Theodore Roosevelt and governor Hiram Johnson of California and the Socialist Party ticket of former Indiana state representative Eugene V. Debs and Milwaukee mayor Emil Seidel.

Roosevelt served as president from 1901 to 1909 as a Republican, and Taft succeeded him with his support. Taft's conservatism angered Roosevelt, so he challenged Taft for the party nomination at the 1912 Republican National Convention. When Taft and his conservative allies narrowly prevailed, Roosevelt rallied his progressive supporters and launched a third-party bid. At the Democratic Convention, Wilson won the presidential nomination on the 46th ballot, defeating Speaker of the House Champ Clark and several other candidates with the support of William Jennings Bryan and other progressive Democrats. The Socialist Party renominated its perennial standard-bearer, Eugene V. Debs.

The Liberal Republican Party was an American political party that was organized in May 1872 to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872. The party emerged in Missouri under the leadership of Senator Carl Schurz and soon attracted other opponents of Grant; Liberal Republicans decried the scandals of the Grant administration and sought civil service reform. The party opposed Grant's Reconstruction policies, particularly the Enforcement Acts. It lost in a landslide, and disappeared from the national stage after the 1872 election.

The Republican Party had emerged as the dominant party in the aftermath of the Civil War, but many original Republicans became dissatisfied with the leadership of President Grant. Prominent liberal leaders like Schurz and Lyman Trumbull had been leaders in the fight against slavery and for the first stages of Reconstruction. They considered the task accomplished, and thought continued radical policies to be oppressive. By 1872, they demanded an end to Reconstruction and a restoration of self-government to the South.

The Stalwarts were a faction of the Republican Party that existed briefly in the United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age during the 1870s and 1880s. Led by U.S. senator Roscoe Conkling—also known as "Lord Roscoe"—Stalwarts were sometimes called Conklingites. Other notable Stalwarts included Benjamin Wade, Charles J. Folger, George C. Gorham, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas C. Platt, and Leonidas C. Houk. The faction favored Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth president of the United States (1868–1876), running for a third term in the 1880 United States presidential election.

The designation of "Stalwart" to describe the faction was coined by James G. Blaine, who would later lead the rival "Half-Breed" faction during the Garfield administration. Blaine and his political organization formed an informal coalition with the Stalwarts during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, supporting patronage and advocating on behalf of Southern blacks. The Maine Senator also frequently joined Stalwarts in voting against nominations of reformers by President Hayes who received the support of Democrats and staunch Half-Breed Republicans. Blaine applied the term to commend Conkling's faction as devoted loyalists to the Republican Party's principles.

The "Half-Breeds" were a political faction of the United States Republican Party in the late 19th century.

The Half-Breeds were a comparably moderate group, and were the opponents of the Stalwarts, the other main faction of the Republican Party. The main issue that divided the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds was political patronage. The Stalwarts were in favor of political machines and spoils system-style patronage, while the Half-Breeds, later led by Maine senator James G. Blaine, were in favor of civil service reform and a merit system. The epithet "Half-Breed" was invented in derision by the Stalwarts to denote those whom they perceived as being "only half Republican".

War Democrats in American politics of the 1860s were members of the Democratic Party who supported the Union and rejected the policies of the Copperheads, or Peace Democrats. The War Democrats demanded a more aggressive policy toward the Confederacy and supported the policies of Republican President Abraham Lincoln when the American Civil War broke out a few months after his victory in the 1860 presidential election.

The 1864 National Union National Convention was the United States presidential nominating convention of the National Union Party, which met in Baltimore, Maryland on June 7 and 8, 1864. National Union was the name adopted by the main faction of the Republican Party in a coalition with many, if not most, War Democrats and Unconditional Unionists after some Republicans and War Democrats nominated John C. Frémont over Lincoln a few weeks earlier. The National Union renominated Abraham Lincoln for president and Andrew Johnson was nominated for vice president. During the Convention, the party adopted a platform calling for a victorious end in the ongoing Civil War, the eradication of slavery by constitutional amendment and the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.